Love–what word is so overworked, misused, degraded, yet remains so fundamental and indispensable to a truly human life? Even more than spirituality, love eludes definition….
God is Love (1 Jn 4:16). Love is God’s very being; the life of the Trinity is an exchange of love among the three Persons–a love that pours itself out in creation, in the redemptive incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, and in each and every human being, made in God’s image and made to respond in kind, by loving.
–Edith Scholl, OCSO
Love’s birthplace is God.
There it is born, there nourished, there developed.
There it is a citizen, not a stranger but a native.
Love is given by God alone, and it endures in him, for it is due to no one else but him and for his sake.
–William of Saint Thierry.
from In the School of Love. An Anthology of Early Cistercian Texts. Selected and annotated by Edith Scholl, OCSO. Cistercian Publications. 2000, pp. 10-11.
